CineBad!!!

“You’ve got quite a ‘tude, man. You should start a band and call it The Attitude.”

Yes, it’s Joan Jett, in all her macho badass self, telling off Michael J. Fox. I actually liked this film a lot, although it was a little bit draggy. Joan stars as Patti, a lower-middle-class suburban girl who just wants to rock! She’s the lead signer of the Barbusters, a local band made up of her two best friends and her brother Joe (Fox.) Patti also has an illegitimate kid, Benji, who’s caught in the crossroads of an intergenerational family dispute! It’s too bad this movie was made in ‘87, before the Therapy Revolution!

It’s all because of Patti’s mom Jeanette (Rowlands,) who disapproves of Patti’s hardrockin’ lifestyle and thinks that she’s neglecting her kid. Rowlands plays the part to appropriately creepy effect, forcing Patti to say prayers to Jesus and other family-values things. Patti has a major problem with religion– every time someone mentions church she has a major cow! Hmmm… could this have something to do with the secret identity of Benji’s father?!

Patti gets to wear strapless tops and spike her hair and make long dramatic speeches about the power of Rock ‘n Roll. Benji gets to wander around and act cute and innocent, at one point helping Joe to write a rock song in what must be one of the sappiest moments of modern cinema. Joe gets to be the responsible older brother who keeps the family together. And Trent Reznor… he gets to be the leader of an unnamed New Wave band who opens for the Barbusters… in this way he represents the death of Rock, ushering in a new era of unprecedented cheese. I won’t argue with that!

As I said before, I actually enjoyed this movie for real and was rather touched by its dramatically cheese-laden ending. Hey, I’m not made of stone! It takes a medical crisis of made-for-TV proportions to pull this family back together. I was sniffing already! Plus the Barbusters play some fairly decent tunes, written by Bruce Springsteen. A good one to watch with a few brewskis and some old yearbooks.